Job Titles Are Nouns. Your Career Is Made of Verbs.

In a world of increasingly squiggly careers, the evidence of what you can do matters more than the title you did it under.

When every CV begins to sound the same

Most jobseekers are now given similar advice: upload your CV, add the job description and ask AI to optimise everything. The result will probably be fluent, professional and filled with the language employers expect. It may include the right keywords and present your experience more confidently, but it may also sound remarkably similar to the CVs of everyone else who followed the same advice.

Different people begin with different careers, yet generic tools can reduce those careers to the same collection of claims. “Led transformation”, “drove growth”, “managed senior stakeholders” and “delivered against challenging deadlines” are now everywhere. The experiences underneath those statements may be completely different, but the language begins to converge, leaving employers to compare polished applications while the individuals behind them become harder to distinguish.

In my view, the challenge is not the AI itself, but the data underneath it. If the starting point is a broad description such as “managed key accounts”, AI can make it sound more impressive, but it cannot uncover an important delivery failure, a difficult conversation or the decision that helped recover a £350,000 customer relationship unless that evidence has first been explored. The prose may improve, while the person becomes less visible.

What the CV could not show

That was the problem facing an experienced sales professional we worked with after he had spent eighteen months out of work. His CV was accurate, professionally presented and filled with the conventional language of sales, listing accounts, targets and responsibilities. It showed that he had experience, but it failed to explain why an employer should choose him or how that experience might be useful somewhere new.

When we explored his career more closely, one account stood out. It was worth around £350,000 and operated across several sites, but a delivery problem had placed the customer relationship at risk. He explained how he handled the decision maker, worked through the failure and helped recover the account, before going on to exceed his target. On his original CV, this had been compressed into ordinary account management language, which meant the event was technically present but the pressure, judgement and personal responsibility had disappeared.

The experience was there, but its meaning was missing. Once his CV was rebuilt around specific evidence like this, conversations with recruiters began and he later moved from selling air conditioning systems into a business development role within the recruitment industry. The new account of his experience did not create his ability; it simply allowed another employer to see how that ability could transfer.

That change of industry is central to the story. If the employer had compared only sectors and job titles, the move from air conditioning into recruitment might have appeared unlikely because he had never sold recruitment services before. But the work beneath the title showed that he could build commercial relationships, handle senior decision makers, work through delivery problems, restore trust and grow an account. Those experiences did not belong exclusively to the air conditioning industry, and they were relevant to the problems his new employer needed someone to solve.

He did not need AI to invent a connection between two industries. He needed evidence that made the connection credible.

Squiggly careers need transferable evidence

This matters because fewer careers now follow a perfectly straight line. People change sectors, move between functions, return after time away and discover opportunities that do not resemble an obvious promotion from their last position. In a world of increasingly squiggly careers, the ability to recognise and explain transferable experience becomes more important, while relying on previous titles becomes less useful.

We are still taught to understand careers through nouns such as director, manager, consultant, salesperson and recruiter. Employers advertise using the same nouns, then both sides try to decide whether they match. Yet titles are unreliable descriptions of capability because the same title can involve significant authority in one company and very little in another. One person can hold an impressive title with limited autonomy, while somebody else quietly makes important decisions without formal recognition.

Work does not happen in nouns; it happens in verbs. You noticed, questioned, decided, persuaded, repaired, learnt, brought people together and took responsibility when the outcome was uncertain. Those actions tell us how you operate and can travel between companies, sectors and roles more easily than a title can.

This is where generic AI optimisation can become particularly unhelpful for someone trying to change direction. A general model may make a candidate sound more accomplished within their existing category, producing a better air conditioning sales CV when the person actually needs to demonstrate why their experience could matter in recruitment. The risk is not only that candidates sound alike, but that interesting possibilities remain hidden because the technology reinforces the existing label instead of looking beneath it.

Better data creates better decisions

The same problem affects employers. “Led transformation” is an assertion, as is “managed senior stakeholders”, and neither provides enough information to assess someone with confidence. A hiring manager needs to understand what was happening, why it was difficult, what the individual personally did and what changed because of their contribution. Specificity therefore helps both sides: it allows the candidate to recognise and explain what may transfer, while giving the employer something meaningful to explore and evaluate.

For more than twenty years, I have helped companies make senior appointments, and the most useful evidence rarely emerged from someone repeating their responsibilities. It appeared when the conversation reached a moment in which the outcome was uncertain. Asking what was happening, what made it difficult, what the individual noticed, what they decided and what changed as a result can reveal far more than another polished description of their role.

These questions can also uncover the thread running through an entire career. Someone who believes they have spent fifteen years moving between unrelated positions may recognise that they repeatedly enter confused situations and create order. Someone who thinks they are simply good with clients may discover a pattern of rebuilding trust when relationships become difficult. This does not invent a new professional identity; it reveals a pattern that was already there and helps someone understand where it could be useful next.

There is, of course, a difference between transferable experience and missing experience. Some opportunities require technical knowledge, qualifications or context that someone genuinely does not possess, and no amount of storytelling should disguise that. An honest “not yet” is valuable because it replaces a vague fear of not being good enough with a practical question about what needs to be learnt or demonstrated next.

That is the thinking behind Hike. We are building technology that goes beyond rewriting the information already sitting on a CV by exploring what happened, what someone personally did, how they approached it and what difference they made. The person can confirm or correct that account, so the evidence remains theirs. The aim is not to use AI to manufacture an ideal candidate, but to improve the human data underneath the technology so people can recognise what their experience demonstrates and employers can make decisions with greater confidence.

A long job search can distort how someone sees themselves. Silence begins to feel like feedback, rejection feels personal and experience that once made someone feel capable starts to look outdated or irrelevant. Yet your next move may not resemble a neat continuation of your last one, and that does not make it a leap of faith; it means the evidence needs to travel further than the title. Do not ask AI to invent the bridge. Find the experiences that already form it, because your title says where you have been, but what you did there is what can take you somewhere new.